


Grief

by Kimiko93



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers, Vex in her very own mourning process, talking to an empty room, that is literally all that happens, with a bit of a potty mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-01-29 11:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12630510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimiko93/pseuds/Kimiko93
Summary: Vex, working through her brother's death, one conversation in an empty temple at a time.~Chapter 4:“I will never accept this. I just won’t. I can’t. I’ll never miss you any less, and you being gone will never hurt any less. And trust me, I considered throwing myself into a dramatic quest to get you back, but I won’t,” she had to laugh a little, “I can’t, at this point, because I have a daughter who needs me, and a husband who has lost too many people already.”





	1. Spring

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the year after Vax's death. Well. Starting in the spring after the events at the end of episode 115 and going aaall the way to the following winter. Hence the super creative chapter titles. 
> 
> Warning: this is both Vex and me trying to work through that finale. Lots of navel-gazing in the form of monologues happening here.

_You tell me that you love me, but you never want to see me again_

 

The walk to the cemetery was a great deal less gloomy than it ought to have been, Vex found. The sun was shining (a rare occurrence in Whitestone), the birds were chirping happily away, and she could have almost enjoyed the walk, had it not been for… Well.

The first thing that greeted her upon opening the door to the crypt was a gigantic dust cloud that sent her right out of the door again in a fit of coughing and sneezing. Already off to a splendid start, this little endeavor of hers. Nevertheless, she eventually found her way inside, to kneel in front of the improvised altar with a little cup of blood on it that Percy had taken from the Raven Queen’s temple long, long ago. Or so it felt. Might have only been a year and a half at this point, or an entire lifetime. Anything between those two.

She cleared her throat.

“Hello… Brother,” she said into the clam and dusty silence of the former Anders family crypt, and immediately felt silly. “Sorry for not visiting sooner. I mean, I should take better care of my property at the very least.” She managed a nervous laugh. Never had Vex felt more out of place. Not even at the fancy private school she had attended in Syngorn. Or the first meetings of the chamber of Whitestone, during which people had still implicitly been giving her shit for sleeping her way to the top.

“I’m going to bring a broom next time,” she then promised the silence. “To sweep up a little. I mean, I technically have a broom, but not on me right now. Percy took it in for… Adjustments.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Sooo… How have you been? Besides, you know, dead?” She gave the silence some time to answer. It didn’t respond. “That’s what I thought. Well, I have been… Busy. I don’t know if you know, but like, just after you died, Grog did probably the most stupid thing he’ll ever do in his life and got his soul trapped in like a gem in a sword in the most horrible plane of existence,” she started babbling. Babbling was good, it fought down the tears rising up, again. “And yes, it was certifiably worse than the hells, at least you could talk there. Anyway…”

Her knees started to hurt, so she shifted around a little bit until she was sitting flat on her ass, knees hugged tightly against her chest.

“Not a fun trip, that,” she finished lamely. “Though like, I guess I can’t blame Grog too much, because at least he tried… Something. To bring you back, I mean.” She hugged her knees even tighter to keep from balling her fists. “Percival was about to sell his soul for you, did you notice that? Well, and to piss off your patron. It was stupid, but I get where he was coming from.” She sighed. “On that note, Scanlan at least tried to save a wish for you, I guess. I have no idea why he hasn’t tried it afterwards, but what do I know about magic.” She laughed nervously again. “Not enough to be of any help here, that’s for sure…” She shook her head to shake off the tears now.

This was so pointless. What had she hoped to accomplish by coming here in the first place? Pathetic.

“Sometimes I wonder…” Vex then started over. “How different things would have been if I hadn’t died down in that tomb. I wasn’t even dead for that long, and we had a cleric with us who knew his shit, and yet you just… Went ahead and…” She made an empty gesture toward the cup of blood and then fell silent for a bit, before she shook her head and got up to her feet again.

“I can’t do this,” she then told the cup. “And the longer I’m in here, the more I run into the danger of just insulting your… Benefactor? Patron? New main squeeze? Whatever. You think she’d go back on your deal if I just insulted or annoyed her enough? Would that mean you’d come back to us?”

Her next fit of laughter was hysteric more than nervous. Vex was well aware of that, but had stopped caring at this point. “And tempting as that may be, just to annoy her and you, as much as Percival seems to be rubbing off on me in that regard, I won’t do that. You wanna know why? Because sacrificing my life like that wouldn’t be fair to all the people who depend on me.” She snorted. “But I don’t think you ever got that particular part of martyrdom, did you?” She shook her head, anger now boiling inside her.

“Keyleth hasn’t talked to us since we got back from pandemonium,” she spat at the altar. “I don’t know if she has tried anything of her ridiculously awesome druid magic shit to try and bring you back, maybe she has. But as much as we probably could have tried something to keep you with us, you didn’t seem up to fighting for your own life, did you? We did that fucking bitch a giant service, aren’t gods supposed to reward that? Fuck!” She groaned. “I told myself not to antagonize her. Sorry about that. I am rather fond of being alive at the moment, and don’t care to fuck up several people for the rest of their existence with my need to throw away my life to maybe get you back. You wouldn’t understand.”

She stood there awkwardly for a few more moments, tears now flowing freely down her face and fists clenched with the overwhelming need to punch something. She would have killed for Grog’s oven mitts right about now, to tear this entire fucking structure down.

This was so fucking pointless. People had been saying that having a central place to mourn might help. But she didn’t even feel like fucking mourning. Speaking of Grog, she felt a lot more like raging. Percival had encouraged her to do this to get closure or something, but there was no fucking closure to be had. It was all just unfair, and she didn’t even want any fucking closure that _didn’t_ involve her brother coming back to her. Ugh.

Without so much as a goodbye, she stormed out of the crypt, threw the door shut behind her, and ran off into the woods just off the cemetery to go shoot something. Her very own way of raging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from "Swans" by Unkle Bob


	2. Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vex gets... Creative in her attempts to get her brother back.

_I bow down to pray, to try and make the worst seem better_

 

It took her two months for her second visit. This time she came armed with a broom and a dust pan.

“I won’t say I’m sorry,” she told the impressive cloud of dust and dirt she was stirring up. “I stand by everything I said, you needed to hear it. I probably should have said some of these things to you why you were around as a walking corpse but, you know, why waste our last moments together with unpleasantness. Though maybe it wouldn’t have been our last moments… Whatever. Still might not have been. Ugh.”

She kept herself busy with sweeping for a bit before she continued.

“Nevertheless, what I will apologize for is my very… unladylike outburst.” She straightened her posture to try and see if her lady-mode made this any easier. It didn’t. “I am unfortunately quite prone to certain hormonal imbalances at the moment, for I am, ah, pregnant.” She paused awkwardly some more, but relaxed her posture. “Should have started with that the last time, I suppose.”

She sat down again on the floor, might as well take advantage of her nimbleness as long as she still had it, and stared at the altar with the cup again.

“I remember our deal, don’t worry,” she then continued. “I’ll name her after mother if it’s a girl. A boy will get all of Percy’s names because family, tradition, blah. So I guess I’ll have to have at least two at some point, if I’m not taking care of that right now. You know. Percival had siblings who were twins. We are. With my luck, I’m incubating actual sextuplets right now.” She snorted.

“I won’t name any of them after you,” she then declared, glaring at her stomach now. “That’d just be weird. Also, you don’t deserve it. Also also, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want me to, anyway. And that would also also also mean that I accept… This.” She gestured towards the altar with the cup some more. “By the way, does this blood stuff ever need to be refilled, or is it magical and never dries out? I’d check, but it kind of freaks me out and right now, I am supposed to not put any additional stress on myself.”

The emptiness of the crypt didn’t make her laughter sound any less hollow.

“You’re also technically the first person I have told about… This.” She waved at her still mostly flat stomach. “Not the first to know, mind you. That was Pike, when she told me about it. And then everyone else just sort of found out about it immediately afterwards. You know, the way most people kind of just find out about my personal life whenever Percival is concerned…” She trailed off bitterly.

“Oh, yeah, he is the father, duh,” Vex added unnecessarily after the silence had become too overwhelming. “And just so you know, once your niece or nephew, uh, nibling is outside of me, I won’t be taking them here with me. If you want to meet them, and any that might follow, you have to fucking come around to visit yourself.”

Another bout of silence. At least she didn’t feel like yelling or smashing things right now. That was progress! She didn’t feel any less… Less with her brother gone, either, though.

“I don’t really have much to say besides that,” she attempted once more. “I mean, as far as pregnancies go, this one is pretty good so far. I don’t even puke that much. I just eat. A lot. That’s kinda how everyone else found out, by the way. Over dinner. Because I was eating so much.” She shrugged. “Well, or because I refused the wine, I guess. And Pike wasn’t good at covering for me. Probably that, to be honest.”

She snorted.

“You know what’s actually kind of funny?” She then asked the empty air around her. “I might totally have conceived your nibling on the very day that you died. Took Percy camping, like the two of us used to, and, well…” She stopped and shuddered. “You didn’t need to know that, did you?

“Could have just as easily been during the pandemonium trip,” she then admitted. “Less poetic, but just as likely. That’s when I stopped caring about preventing it. Which is another detail you didn’t need to hear, dammit.”

Then, a brilliant thought occurred to her.

“Or you know what?” She asked eagerly. “If you don’t want to hear this, come down here to stop me yourself! Ha! So… Hm. Where to start? Oh, yeah, this pregnancy thing has me really, really horny all the time. And I’ve almost convinced Percy that my condition isn’t actually that delicate yet, ever since he found out, he’s been a bit of a mess and kind of scared of touching me, but we’re working through that. Ah, shit. Ah, fuck! Dammit!” She interrupted herself to look down at her stomach some more. “ _You_ really don’t need to hear that, do you? I mean, I suppose you’re around for the main event, but the midwife said that was okay… Uh… Anyways. Headphones, dear.” And with that, she pressed her hands against the sides of her stomach. Mostly to make herself feel better about discussing her sex life where her fucking child could hear. Sort of.

“Then again, the fact that Percy and I are getting it on all the time is probably not news to you anyway,” she mused. “How does this whole being dead shit work, anyway? Are you just omniscient? Do you watch us doing it? That’s so creepy. Huh. But then I guess you already know what the true purpose of Manners is. Or, well, not the true purpose, but what we have repurposed it for, at least…” She giggled hysterically again. “Not recently though because of Percy’s aforementioned trepidations. Look at me, using big ladylike words to discuss my sex life. Amazing. Hm.”

She started pacing back and forth for a bit.

“Not much I can scandalize you with, then,” Vex realized disappointedly. “Dammit, this was my greatest plan yet! Who needs true resurrection when you can just gross out someone back to life?” Then, a big grin made it onto her face. “Oh, I know just the perfect thing to tell you. Remember that speech you gave Percy? After we defeated Thordak? In the bathtub? Yeah, so do I. And do you know how I remember that? Because I was in the tub the whole time!”

Her big finish unfortunately did nothing to rouse her brother back to life in that exact moment.

“Dammit, I could have sworn that’d have grossed you out enough to make me stop,” she cursed. “I mean, technically it’s not any grosser than the fact that we floated around naked in a womb together for nine months, which is an even tighter space than a bathtub, just so you know.” She glanced down at her stomach again, which she was still holding. “The thought of fitting not just one, but two people inside there kind of freaks me out more than ever right now. Just the thought that I am currently growing my very own person inside of me, and it got there by me fucking Percival… This is some weird shit, you know.” She sighed. “And this was probably the weirdest conversation someone ever had at a temple in an attempt to reconnect with their dead brother. But hey, if anyone could do it, it’s me. So, uh. See you later, I guess.”

With that, she left the crypt again, but as soon as she stepped out onto the cemetery, she heard a very peculiar noise. Something between cawing and retching, decidedly bestial in nature, but not a sound she had ever heard any kind of animal make.

Looking around, she eventually noticed a raven, perched up on a tombstone, coughing up feathers the way cat coughed up fur balls.

“YOU!” She yelled at the bird, before running towards it, non-flying broom in hand. “HAHA! I’ve found you! I knew this would work!”

The raven interrupted his coughing, looked up at her as if she’d completely lost her marbles, and then cawed at her without coughing just to inform her of this very fact.

“Yeah, nice try, but I’m not buying that,” she said, as she casted speak with animals on herself. “I’ve seen through your shit!”

The raven didn’t respond.

“Oh, come on!” She yelled at the bird. “I just heard you caw, I know you can talk!”

No response.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Vex yelled and got closer, broom and dustpan threateningly pointed at the bird, who quickly took off flying.

“Oh fuck you!” She roared at it and tried to follow it on the broom, only to belatedly remember that this was a completely ordinary specimen, rather than her flying treasure that Percy was still in the process of constructing a baby seat for. Trinket already had a matching harness.

“I’m onto you!” She yelled. “I’m the fucking Mistress of the Grey Hunt, I will hunt you down and MAKE you talk to me if I have to!” And with that, she dropped speak with animals and casted Hunter’s Mark on the bird, to eventually chase it down with her own means to fly. She would not be bested by her brother, ever, whether alive or weirdly reincarnated into a bird, or whatever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from "Million Reasons" by Lady Gaga


	3. Fall

_So hard to move on  
Still loving what's gone_

 

“You’re a dick.” She opened up and put down the weird contraption that folded out in a chair that Percy had made for her. “And yes, I know I’m fat, but you’re a dick.”

The pregnancy had stopped being fun. Now it was all waddling around and swollen ankles and aching joints. Also she was too fat to hug her knees. Putting on her shoes had become a major chore, but one she refused to call the chambermaids for, she was pregnant, not special needs, dammit.

“Mute ravens? Really?” Vex opened her rant. “Is that you trying to fuck with me or your chaperone? No ravens at all would have been kinder than that! Ugh.” At the last moment, she remembered not to throw herself into the chair. It was foldable, transportable, extremely convenient when your ankles got the best of you, but also somewhat fragile. A lot more comfortable than the broom, though.

She ran her hands over her face, already feeling like crying. This was going so well.

“So just in case this actually works the way it’s supposed to, but your patroness has kept this stuff from you…” She told the empty shelf at the backwall that probably used to hold the urns of Anders family members. “I, uh, may or may not have gotten Pike and Scanlan very, very drunk recently. That’s actually extremely easy when you can’t drink yourself. Just tell them to drink one for you. Not that Pike ever turned down an opportunity to get shitfaced anyway, but…” She trailed off. Then something occurred to her.

“They’re dating now, did you know that?” She said, chasing away the dark thoughts she had been about to voice. “Taking it totally slow, and Scanlan is so nervous every time they go out. I don’t think they even kissed at this point, though Pike told me she’d have been down to fuck after date two or so. But I think it’s great that they’re taking their time. And that they get to take their time without having to fear dying every other day…” Vex had to fight down a sob now.

“So, uh…” She continued after composing herself. “I got them drunk. Yes. And you know what else I’ve been doing? Spending money. Making money, spending it on diamonds. Hell, I managed to talk some kind of big fish into getting the diamond that Keyleth jumped off the cliff for for me. We still haven’t seen Keyleth, by the way. We write her regularly and ask her to visit, but no word. Good job, you.”

She didn’t even bother to fight the tears now.

“I know, I know, that’s not fair, but fuck that. So! Back to my story! I got Pike and Scanlan drunk and I got diamonds. So, ah, I talked her into attempting True Resurrection. For you.” Her voice broke. “And I researched this shit! That spell can bring back people who have been dead for centuries, body or no body. And yet, here I am, and you are not, you dick.” She took a shuddering breath, not even caring that she was full-on crying now. “A-and from what I read, that means either your soul isn’t free, or you’re fucking unwilling, and you know, given how easily you just kinda accepted… This…” She gestured at the cup full of blood on the altar. “I guess it’s the latter, you fucking asshole.”

She hiccupped while trying to form more words. And then had to laugh hysterically, while still crying, when she felt the kid inside her hiccup as well. Must be five PM; for the last few weeks, she could have set her clock after when the kid got the hiccups. Kind of freaky that was possible in the first place, and the way her stomach bulged in random places when it happened was even freakier.

“I mean,” she continued after the laughter wore off, but the crying didn’t. “I mean, I guess she could also just not let you leave, and I guess that would make me feel better, but... Well… Walking away, especially from me, has always been kind of your thing, hasn’t it?”

She sighed.

“Well, and then we faced the dilemma of what to do with diamonds worth 25 thousand gold pieces. Would be a waste not to make use of that one resurrection, wouldn’t it? But, get this, when we had to think about who else we wanted to bring back that wasn’t you, we couldn’t come up with anyone!” She snorted. “Well, not exactly, we came up with a bunch of people, but decided against it. Like Tiberius, for example. But Percy pointed out that bringing him back to see his entire civilization fallen, his family dead, and no real effort to rebuild Draconia because of all that slavery shit, with us being kind if supportive of that even because of the slavery shit, would have just been unnecessarily cruel. He’d probably just get himself killed again, going off on his own to fight whoever dares to talk ill about the Stormwinds or Draconia, so no. Not him.

“Obvious choice for me, after you, duh, would have been mother,” she continued. “But I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong it would have felt to have her back, but not you. She probably wouldn’t have wanted that anyway. And chances are the two of you are chumming it up in the afterlife right now. So I’d also feel bad taking that away from you.” She snorted again. “Isn’t that just great? You get mother, and I get our dickish father. Though to be fair, he’s… Actually kinda mourning you?” She paused to consider this. “Yes, he seemed actually sad when we told him. Oh, also, you dick! Do you know how horrible it was to explain to Velora why you had been fine one minute, and were just gone the next? That’s just another item on a list of things I’ll never forgive you for. First, dying. Second, not coming back when you could have.

“Ugh. So we continued to think about it,” Vex sighed. “Percy has a long list of people he could bring back, of course, but he refused to make the choice for one dead relative over all the others. Grog didn’t even know his mother, and didn’t seem too keen on bringing his dad back with the herd gone. And Scanlan got really deep and all about it when we asked about his mother. Said he’d rather see her again once he is done putting his life in order, doing right by not only Kaylie but his other children that apparently exist, and basically becoming someone he’d want his mother to meet.” Much to her chagrin, just recounting that made her tear up again. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t mind meeting a son who fucking saved the world like at least twice, but I guess I understand the sentiment.

“Keyleth’s mom might have been an option,” Vex closed her tale. “Be we didn’t want to make that call without her, and she is, as I said, still not talking to us. So Pike then made the productive suggestion to keep the diamonds for the next time someone gets disintegrated.” She chuckled a little. “Feels a bit selfish, I guess, but now we at least have an emergency diamond supply, just in case…” She gestured towards the altar again. Then she balled her hands into fists bitterly.

“This is all so backwards, though,” she muttered. “You get money and wealth to stay alive. To keep your family alive. Now I have all this fucking money and other forms of wealth, and I still lost you. What the fuck?” She was going to get such a headache from all this crying later on, but fuck it. Wasn’t this what she was supposed to be doing?

“I mean, I-I know all this wealth is going to make sure that neither I nor my kid will ever have to get involved with shady shit to feed ourselves, not like the two of us had to, but, that’s just…” She buried her head in her hands to avoid looking at the empty temple. “That’s not what I ever hoarded money for! That was to get the two of us through the next day, the next week, the next month. And now you’re gone, and I won’t have do that anymore, ever, and I _failed_ at the one job I had! If I’d had the diamonds ready immediately after you died, none of this would have happened!”

She cowered there, sobbing, in her little foldable chair, in a cold, clammy, empty temple for a few more minutes, again beseeched by the realization that this was pointless. It wasn’t making her feel any better, only worse. It made her feel even less whole, even emptier than she already did feel with her other half gone. Pointlessly talking to him about how bad she felt for losing him, for failing him in the one thing she could do, wasn’t helping her at all, and she also knew if he were around to actually hear her, Vax wouldn’t have any of it, either.  

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” she muttered into her hands after a while. “I… Have to go. I’m sorry. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back.” And with that, she practically fled the dark and gloomy interior of the temple as quickly as her current condition allowed, never looking back. Not even when she heard ravens caw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from "I Grieve" by Peter Gabriel


	4. Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I actually finished this. Oh my god. I added lyrics to all the chapters, they're from the playlists Liam and Laura published, which you can find on the Geek and Sundry website. They both helped me a lot in writing this, and in processing a few things in my life.

_Think it's time to put myself away, seek out a little silence  
Close the door and sit a while, and walk a little_

 

When she had been very little, Vex had loved the snow. The way it quieted everything down and made the world look pretty. When she had been somewhat older, she had finally understood why her mom hadn’t – snow meant cold, cold meant winter clothes and coats, and firewood to make it through the night; additional expenses, each and every year, with two kids who were rambunctious enough to need new clothes quite frequently. At some point, even with how good her mom, being a seamstress and all, had been at fixing things and making them last, some things just were beyond fixing.

Once she’d had the means of keeping her brother, herself, and then the rest of Vox Machina reasonably outfitted for cold weather, the snow had simply become an inconvenience. Made it harder to hide, easier to track and be tracked.

Now, she had all the money she could ever need, a custom-made set of white dragon armor that protected her from the cold better than any fur coat ever could, and made her harder to see in snowy landscapes. And she happened to live in a place that was perpetually covered in snow for about a third of the year – except for the roads, that is, due to that clever husband of hers.

Vex had learned to like the snow again.

She liked the way it crunched underfoot, the way it sparkled in the light, the way the nights were a lot less dark with everything outside being white, how things seemed to slow down, and the way everything seemed to somehow be cleansed by the snow; covered up for a while and looking so much prettier when it reappeared.

It also made the ravens following her and leaving behind feathers everywhere easier to spot. There were a lot more of them around now, and all of them were mute when she tried to talk to them. And yet there was now also something weirdly comforting about their presence.

The cemetery was full of foot tracks. Winter’s Crest had just come and gone, and many people in  Whitestone had adopted that date as a date to remember the loved ones they had lost during the Briarwoods’ reign and the rebellion. Part of the reason she got here so late, to make sure she was actually… Alone. For the first time in a long time.

Dust had gathered at the temple again, which almost made her feel just a little guilty if not for the fact that she had barely been able to move for the last few months. She waved the cloud away and pulled the door shut behind her.

Everything was as she had left it. Cup with blood on an altar, ominous empty shelf in the background that didn’t hold urns anymore. Gloomy, clammy, unwelcoming, cold. Same old, same old.

“So…” She greeted her brother. “Remember when I told you I won’t be back? Yeah, I lied. But you knew that, didn’t you?

“You’ll notice I’m not quite as fat anymore,” she continued, and, following a sudden intuition, went towards the altar and sat down next to the cup of blood. It was still there, didn’t even dry a little or had the white stuff rise to the top. So at least that magic worked. “Well, you probably knew that. I mean, I’m touched you were there for the birth, but honestly? Seeing a Raven in the window after ten hours of labor actually just made me fear that your benefactor had come to claim another one of my family members. You know, in some creepy deal where I have to give her a child for every time she brought us all back. Geez, how many would that even be?” She shook her head.

“So maybe you saw all that.” She paused to show-gag a bit. “Well, from where you were sitting, hope you got a good look at the massacre that went on down there. Seriously, I probably lost enough blood to make my very own blood swimming pool!” She glanced down critically at the cup again. “But something tells me that’s not exactly how this works. Anyway!

“In case you were not there, let me just tell you, giving birth sucks. I’m totally up for doing it again some time, maybe once or twice, but whoever came up with the process deserves to go through it every day, over and over again, for the rest of their miserable afterlife. This includes whatever gods might be responsible for this!” She told the ceiling, raising her voice a little. “Dick move!”

She drew her knees up to her chest experimentally, and delighted at discovering that she could do it without a giant-ass belly getting in the way and without excruciating pain shooting through her nether regions.

“Though I mean, besides the fact that I was bleeding out and in horrible pain for about a day, the entire event was a bit of a party.” She snorted. “Actually, given that it had no body count, it was even one of our better ones. I mean, how often did we ever come out of something with more living people than we went in with? I didn’t even invite anyone over, and yet, all of Vox Machina was there! Pike even started taking classes once she learned about my pregnancy, because she might just be the only cleric in all of Exandria who performed more resurrections than she delivered babies. She told me afterwards that she honestly might prefer the resurrections, though, and yeah, I get that.

“Kashaw was surprisingly good at this. No idea how Zahra convinced him to come, especially with their own kid only like two or three months old at the time. The big sap actually did name their little one after you, by the way, so at least somebody did. Now, he’ll deny it, and he’ll deny it was his idea, but Zahra filled me in. I mean, the name proper is Dan, but come on.

“But I guess the biggest help was an older woman named Tara. Absolutely no magical abilities on her, but she’s the very same midwife who delivered Percy and all of his siblings and just about everyone in this town under the age of fifty, it seems. When everyone else was freaking out, she acted like it was just another Conthsen afternoon to her. No big deal. And I guess when you helped deliver an entire town, what’s one more birth, really?”

She chuckled slightly and then sighed into her knees.

“Keyleth came through, you know?” She muttered after a while. “I mean, if course, you’d never have doubted she would, but I wanted to mention it anyway. She seems… Fine-ish. Finer than me, in any case.” Vex snorted, with just a little bit of bitterness. “Interesting talk we had, by the way. Don’t know if you could tell, but I kind of blame you for this. I mean, your new landlady, too, obviously, but again, you didn’t try to fight it, really, did you?” She sighed. “Keyleth sees it differently. I think she blames me. Well, and Percy. Both of us, for fucking up with that coffin the way we did. Which, okay, if we follow back the chain of events to like, the absolute very beginning, I get it…” She snorted.

“Scanlan made the productive suggestion we should just blame Vecna. Which. I mean. Yeah. Duh. But the thing is, this is different. Bad guys don’t really kill us, not permanently. Never have. This is the only time that actually happened. Bad guys _try_ to kill us. It’s what they do. Of course they do. What else would they do?

“Keyleth, for some reason, thinks about you and dying like you did the same way. Like you couldn’t help yourself.” She bit her lips to keep the bitterness at bay. “Says it’s what you’ve been walking towards ever since the tomb, and that you knew that and had been anticipating this. Which I wouldn’t know, because you never talked to me about any of this shit. I mean, I get it, you wanted to protect me, and that’s very noble and all. It’ll just also make me feel forever guilty that you basically sacrificed yourself for me. Though I’m still convinced you wouldn’t have had to, but, well. Force of nature, as Keyleth put it.”

She shook her head sadly.

“But Keyleth blames herself too, you know?” She continued. “She doesn’t let it on until she’s really drunk, but guess what everyone got after Elaina was born. Even though she seems to understand more about this than the rest of us, she also blames herself for apparently not giving you enough to live for.” She bit her lips. “You know who also blames herself? Pike. For showing you the way, as you put it. That’s probably going to haunt her for the rest of her days, too. She built you a bench, by the way. Though you probably know that because there’s always an entire flock of ravens sitting on it. They all won’t talk to me.”

Vex sighed and looked at the cup of blood directly again. She briefly contemplated dipping a finger into it or something, just to see if this was enough of a temple for her to go all the way in and talk to the goddess they were kind of trying to honor here. Percy had been very tight-lipped about it, but at least he’d explained some things to her, rather than cryptically keep it to himself like Vax always had. Drowning herself in a pool or cup of blood hadn’t exactly been on the agenda today, but… Well…

“And just… For the record, okay?” She told the cup instead. “I’ve always known that you would die for me without hesitation. Never doubted that. I just want you to know that I’d have done the same for you. In a heartbeat.” Vex paused, then she had to snort. “Well, I would have tried to get a better deal first, if our roles were reversed, because that’s just what I do. I don’t accept the suggested price of things, people usually want to rip you off. That applies to shopping just as it does to this. Probably.”

She mulled this over for a bit.

“Come to think of it, like, from what I can tell, you were majorly ripped off anyway. And I don’t even mean that self-deprecatingly, like I’m not worth it. I mean, most of the time I’m pretty sure I’m not but that’s beside the point. I mean, what exactly did you or anyone but Her get out of this, hm? Me back to life that one time. Okay. But we managed that with Pike and Grog before you ever got in with Her. Hells, we managed to get Scanlan back even after the first attempt failed. I’ve been looking up resurrection magic, and from what we’ve seen in Elysium and the Artheneeum, souls don’t automatically pass over to your patroness. The first time he died, Percival’s soul went to Orthax, because he also got a bad deal no one ever spelled out the terms for him for. And it’s not like your benefactor was eager to intercede on his behalf there, Keyleth had to wrestle Percy’s soul free, remember? And he doesn’t recall shit about any god coming to help out. That was all Keyleth and Pike. Uh. And me, I guess.”

She cleared her throat.

“So technically, resurrections should have worked without her. And I mean, at the end of the day, she benefited from all of us still being alive anyway, so it’s not like that would have been some completely selfless favor she did us. Same with turning you into that dead man walking thing. I mean, what did that do? It made you sense Vecna, okay, sure. But we had magic to locate him. And that titan would have been pretty hard to miss after a while anyway. I also think Artagan would have probably helped us even if we had to offer him something less exciting than strangling you. Like an orgy, maybe. So time was not exactly of the essence anyway, come to think of it. 

“And even if it was… Vasselheim is pretty fucking important to most gods, isn’t it? And the whole undead thing was infringing upon your benefactor’s domain in a major way, wasn’t it? Way more than it infringed upon Pelor or Ioun, and Scanlan and I got waaay more from these two than you did from Her, and that for a lot less service. If that’s not the definition of being ripped off, I don’t know what is.

“So we saved Her biggest place of worship, got rid of the guy trying to negate Her domain, and who was also sullying Her legacy by using the same method of ascension, and all you got was getting to do that a little faster. Her fucking trammel broke, even. If anything, we could probably sue her for the platinum we invested in that, or something.”

Vex shook her head and then looked up at the ceiling again.

“Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, or anything,” she declared, now addressing the Raven Queen. “But when selling your soul to a literal Prince of the Nine Hells leaves more room for negotiation and gets you a written contract to refer to and is, as such, somehow more transparent and equitable than signing up for your service was, I mean, maybe it’s time to consider a policy change.”

She sighed and leaned back, letting her feet dangle off the altar, shaking her head as she looked at the cup again.

“Yes, brother, I know you don’t care about any of this,” she clarified. “As long as you got to save someone somehow, this is probably fine for you. And who knows, maybe we would have been doomed if things had gone differently. Maybe more people would have died, or maybe not. And maybe I would be the one who stayed dead.” Vex sighed. “People say at some point you’re supposed to accept things as they are. I don’t. I won’t. And, I mean, if our roles were reversed, with me dead and you left behind, would you leave it be? Would you accept things and move on with your life? Or would you not throw yourself into any possibility to bring me back, at the expense of your own life? Like you basically did to get into this situation in the first place?”  

She sighed again.

“Don’t worry, that’s not what I’m going to do. I’m just going to complain about the double standard and the unfairness of the universe that I’m supposed to be the one who has to accept things here when you never would have.” Vex now jumped off the altar, quietly marveling at the fact that she could also do that without endangering herself and others. “I will never accept this. I just won’t. I can’t. I’ll never miss you any less, and you being gone will never hurt any less. And trust me, I considered throwing myself into a dramatic quest to get you back, but I won’t,” she had to laugh a little, “I can’t, at this point, because I have a daughter who needs me, and a husband who has lost too many people already.”

The reality behind that statement still overwhelmed her on occasion.

“And while I will never accept them, I do respect your wishes, to a degree. And I know that you’d never forgive yourself if I did something stupid to bring you back, and that you’re probably much happier now with your Hostess and probably mom than you’d be back alive under these circumstances. So I’ll just do what you never could have done, and live on. Live for both of us.” And maybe to spite the Raven Queen a little, but she didn’t say that out loud. “And living means I now have to get back to my family. To my _daughter_ , can you believe that?” She had to laugh at the absurdity of it all again.

“I’ll be back, for a spring cleaning at the latest,” she assured her brother, turned away from the altar and left the temple with a last wave.

The cold Whitestone air hit her in the face, and with a deep breath, she did not only release a sizable cloud of steam due to the chill, but somehow also all the pressure in the world. Maybe that thing about the central place to grieve had some truth to it after all; for the first time since… Everything, she actually felt better. Lighter. Freer.

When she turned to walk away, back to her house and her family and her _home_ , something heavy landed on her head, pressed its claws painfully into her hair, just enough to mess up the braid, and then flew off with a loud caw.

“You’re still a dick!” She called after the raven as it flew off.

 

_I'm gonna turn myself into the grass, and I'll grow  
Take this space above my head, and live in it a little_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KT Tunstall - Someday Soon


End file.
